The Devil's Intern by Donna Hosie

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The Devil's Intern
by Donna Hosie

One of the books I read this week was Donna Hosie’s The Devil’s Intern. In it, we are presented an afterlife in Hell where the damned souls who don’t make it to heaven are instead sent to hell to become devils.  The Devil is perhaps the only demon presented that has any major connection to the traditional construct of an adversary to Heaven’s will; the majority of the characters are human souls who have died and who now live in Hell. In this regard, the novel’s version of devils is very different than one presented in most Judeo-Christian versions of fallen angels; here all who die and don’t make it to heaven become devils. 

The story follows the trajectory of Mitchell Johnson and his three closest devil friends, Medusa (aka Melissa Pallister), Alfarin, and Elinore, as they play around with a time-travel device, the Viciseometer.  Mitchell’s plan was originally to steal this time-traveling device, then visit the time of his death and somehow prevent it, thus sparing himself the early death that he suffered.  His friends come along for support and find themselves on the run from Skin-Walkers, horrible demons that track down Unspeakables, truly evil humans who are set to suffer in a different part of Hell.  One by one, the four visit their untimely demises, but instead of stopping their own deaths, their time-travel meddling has consequences that affect their deaths. For example, Alferin’s Viking clan see him after they have sent a longboat with his burning remains out to sea, and take this as an omen that he has made it safely to an honorable death. In Elinore’s case, choosing to save herself would mean choosing to let her two brothers die in a fire, and so she chooses to remain in the fire instead. Alferin and Mitchell attempt to rescue her, but instead can only give her a quick death, rather than the more excruciatingly painful death of dying in flames. Mitchell discovers that his mother had a second son after his death, and he faces the fact that if he had not died, his brother would never have been born. In addition, if he were to prevent his death, Alferin and Elinore would never have had the Viciseometer that allowed them to participate in their deaths in the way they have. In the end, it seems that it was the vision of his other time-traveling self that caused him to step into the oncoming bus that kills him.  Medusa’s encounter is the only one in which the four actually prevent a death. Due to their meddling, they are able to cause the death of Medusa’s stepfather, a truly wicked man who abused little girls before and after Medusa’s death.  The Skin-Walkers that had been hounding them, it turns out, were not after Medusa or any of the other friends but were instead hunting down her stepfather.  Medusa’s efforts mean she doesn’t die on the Golden Gate bridge, and her mother doesn’t blame herself for Medusa’s death.  The consequences of changing the timestream is that the three others, Mitchell, Alferin, and Elinore, have no memories of their friendship with Medusa because she doesn’t become a devil in the same way as before.  However, the book ends with Mitchell interviewing a possible second intern, a young devil named Melissa Pallister. The way the story unfolds, it seems that Mitchell’s boss, Septimus, knew all along what would happen and allowed it to unfold according to his plan.

I will admit that this was not one of my favorite books to read. It wasn’t until I suspected that something was not quite right with Medusa and that the Skin-Walker’s are following her and not any of the other three that the book really got interesting.  The mystery of how she died and why she desires to punish her abusive stepfather are a great complication in the plot and perhaps the most interesting part of the novel, but it really only happens in the last third of the book.  I think the novel might have teen appeal, but I would warn readers that they need to be patient enough to get to the more interesting parts of the book and not give up in the early parts that perhaps don’t work as well.